1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a website access technique of connecting a user terminal to a desired one of a large number of websites on a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have been provided various types of Internet-enabled mobile phones by plural carriers. A typical example is an i-mode service provided by NTT DoCoMo, Inc. in Japan. With an Internet-enabled phone such as an i-mode phone, a user can easily access and obtain convenient online services anywhere at any time, in addition to conventional voice communications. On the other hand, mobile phones are so-called keyboardless devices and therefore entering a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a time-consuming and frustrating experience. For example, when entering a letter “s”, the user must press a key labeled “7” four times.
In general, entering URL is frustrating work, even if a keyboard-equipped computer is used, because the user must carefully enter the URL without making any typing mistakes. Although Bookmarks or Favorites functions can be used to register URLs and select a favorite one from the registered URLs, it is also frustrating to select one of a large number of registered URLs. Especially, in a mobile phone having a small display area installed therein, the inconvenience of searching for favorite URL becomes more pronounced.
In order to reduce such inconvenience, a system for accessing websites directly without having to type a long URL address, called Internet Numbers, has been provided by Internet Number Corporation (see http://www.hatch.co.jp/). According to Internet Numbers, its user can be connected to the homepage of a desired website by simply inputting an easy-to-remember and easy-to-input number which corresponds to the URL of the homepage.
However, the number of digits necessary for representing an increasing number of websites is increasing more and more. This is contradictory to an “easy-to-remember” and “easy-to-input” number which corresponds to the URL of a requested homepage.